“This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen,” Trump declared moments before signing it inside the Oval Office. “There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be a normalized control where you can open your business and expand your business very easily. And that’s what our country has been all about.”

—

“If you have a regulation you want, number one, we’re not gonna approve it because it’s already been approved probably in 17 different forms,” Trump said. “But if we do, the only way you have a chance is we have to knock out two regulations for every new regulation. So if there’s a new regulation, they have to knock out two.”

The order put the regulatory budget at $0 for 2017. This means that “any new ‘burdens’ would have to be offset.” The order does not include the military and national security. It has one flexibility:

An agency can determine the two cuts, the White House can have input and the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] director can make emergency exceptions.

“That’s a big one,” Trump said upon signing the order.

Officials explained that the memo the White House recently issued on temporary regulation freezes remains in place and that the executive order sets up the process going forward.

Trump hopes the order will help small businesses grow, which would help create new jobs.

I’d like to see this EO as an ‘addition to’. As in the Trump Administration combs through the regulations and eliminates those that are unnecessary and this EO is just to cover those regulations that they might have missed.

Numbers of regulations sounds nice, but is almost meaningless. If it required that in order to pass a new reg, old regs of at least double the cost/budget burden would need to be eliminated, it would have a beneficial impact.

Its importance is that it may be the first time that anyone actually in a prominent position in government has stated, as a principle and as a concrete—albeit modest—proposition, that the unlimited accumulation of rules and regulations is not one of the proper functions of government.

The very idea that generating red tape is not an accomplishment is something we’d never get from a professional career politician.

Starting at least with Coolidge, and moving right along in fits and starts THROUGH the Clinton administrations. It may have been just chin-music from Dollar Bill, but reducing the red tape in the central government was one of OwlGore’s primary tasks.

“I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent–the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?” – Professor Bernardo de la Paz, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” (Robert Heinlein)

Legitimate question, has Congress done anything useful yet? The good thing about Obama’s EOs is that they can be undone by Trumps orders. But let’s not be too short sided as Democrats were. In 4 or 8 years there’s a good chance there will be another Dem president. We need to get these things codified into law.

And there we run into the senate’s 60-vote barrier — the same barrier that prevented the Democrats from entrenching their agenda into legislation. Remember that 0bamacare only passed because they briefly had 60 senators, and once they were down to 59 they were unable to amend it. Now the same barrier prevents Republicans from doing as we would wish, but remember that if “in 4 or 8 years there’s a good chance there will be another Dem president”, it’s equally likely that in the same timeframe there will be a Dem congress, and knocking down the barrier will give them free rein. They’re already regretting knocking it down for nominations (except for the supreme court); let’s not be in that same situation 4 or 6 or 8 years from now.

Sounds like a good start. Now if we could eliminate funding nonsense like studies that determine whether one-legged canary owners are disproportionately impacted by restricted access on odd Tuesdays to arugula-infused soy lattes in Podunk Holler, then we’d really be making progress.

Devils Advocate position here: The immediate effect will be that agencies will revoke two specific regulations in exchange for passing one vague regulation that covers both of the aforementioned plus a great deal more ground.

I wonder how this will mess with the upcoming Farm Bill? (every five years)